Actors Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington step forward in the ranks

Ed Symkus

Monday

Aug 29, 2011 at 12:01 AMAug 29, 2011 at 1:24 AM

Take a look at Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington in the new film “The Debt,” opening Wednesday. There’s a good chance that you’ll wonder where such good actors have been hiding. There’s an equal chance that you’ve seen them before but didn’t realize it.

Take a look at Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington in the new film “The Debt,” opening Wednesday. There’s a good chance that you’ll wonder where such good actors have been hiding. There’s an equal chance that you’ve seen them before but didn’t realize it.

Such is the fate of chameleon-like actors.

Worthington starred in “Avatar” and costarred in “Terminator Salvation.”

Chastain starred in “The Tree of Life” and is onscreen in “The Help.”

Unrecognizable in “The Debt,” they’re featured in flashbacks scenes, playing Rachel and David, members of an Israeli Secret Service team who are hunting down a heinous Nazi doctor in 1960s Germany (their current day counterparts are played by Helen Mirren and Ciaran Hinds), but botch the job.

Sitting in a Los Angeles hotel room, Worthington is a laid-back dude, boasting a take-each-day-as-it-comes attitude in a business that has plenty of ups and downs.

Chastain, who recently made the jump from the stage to the screen, seems a little dazed at her sudden success.

Both shared stories about how they landed their parts in “The Debt,” what it was like working with each other, and how, at one point, a claustrophobic section of the film almost drove them nuts.

The film’s director, John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”) had mentioned earlier that the casting of Chastain came out of him wanting someone who was not well known and, upon meeting her, finding that she was “a really interesting, intelligent, charismatic girl.” He also got high praise for her when he called her “Tree of Life” director Terrence Malick.

Chastain remembered first seeing the script while stopping in London after a brief holiday in France.

“From the moment I read it I thought, this is the kind of movie I want to be involved in,” she said, “and I fought like crazy for the part. I knew Helen was probably going to play Rachel. So on my first meeting with John I was going on and on about, ‘Oh, I love the script, I’m the kind of actor who really does research, I’ll take (Israeli self defense training) Krav Maga, I’ll learn German, I do a lot of accents, I went to Juilliard.”

She stopped, took a breath, smiled, and added, “Plus, Helen Mirren’s 5-4, and I’m 5-4.”

Madden went after Worthington well before “Avatar” came out, while he was still filming “Terminator Salvation” in New Mexico. He really only knew him from a small Australian film called “Somersault.”

“Yeah, I was in Albuquerque, in the middle of nowhere. And John flew all the way out there to talk to me,” said Worthington. “I thought, any man that’s willing to fly to Albuquerque, well, I’ll sign on. He’s a very eloquent man. He told me the story, and he’s a great storyteller. And his work is quite diverse. It was quite an easy sell.”

Though they’ve since acted together again in the upcoming “Texas Killing Fields,” “The Debt” marked the first time Chastain and Worthington met.

“She’s so advanced,” said Worthington of his costar. “It’s not about her, it’s about the work, about the character. She’s not worried about vanity or how big her trailer is. She’s got a background of theater, but now her knowledge of film is getting broader.”

Chastain offered equally glowing thoughts on Worthington.

“As an actor you’re worried that you won’t like the person you’re going to have to act with, but immediately I knew, this is golden,” she said. “Sam helped me so much with the action stuff in the film. I had taken months of Krav Maga before I got there. But you know, running and jumping into moving vans, or how to hold a gun to make it good for the camera – I didn’t know that stuff.”

It seems that the only tough time the actors had was when they, along with costars Marton Csokas (as another agent) and Jesper Christensen (as the Nazi doctor) were physically holed up in a house set on a soundstage for more than a month, playing out a sequence where they’re keeping the Nazi as a prisoner while waiting for orders.

“We shot the scenes in the house in order. So it felt like a little play,” said Worthington. “But we were in there for five weeks, and it was claustrophobic, and you were like rats crawling to get out of there. By the time we were finished with the house stuff, I wanted to knock the whole place down.

“You can see that in the film. These people look like they just want to get out of this room.”

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